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Bill Deaton
13-Oct-2003, 11:56
I saw an old wooden Eastman Kodak Enlarging Camera (name on brass plate but no date) that looked like maybe 8 X 10, had bellows, and a large hole in lensboard but I couldn't see the back. Will someone give me some information on this camera? Thanks.

Ernest Purdum
13-Oct-2003, 13:57
I can't be very specific about this camera without more information (and perhaps not even then) but "enlarging cameras" were made for a long time in many sizes and varied greatly in length and capabilities. (I am looking at an illustration of one that has two intermediate frames and a length of 114 inches. It is a 20" X 24"). Some were "Enlarging, Reducing and Copying" cameras.



I assume that this is one of the simpler variety, in which it would resemble a view camera, but with limited movements. Typically, a little rise and shift was provided to allow you to easily line up on the subject, but no swing or tilt. 8" X 10" was a common size, but the one you saw could be a Whole Plate (6 1/2" X 8 1/2") or an 11" X 14". The back would be quite different from a normal camera because it is intended to take several sizes of plates, by means of reducing frames called "kits", and allow light to pass through them. The light source was usually up to the user. He might have chosen to use daylight, or one of several sorts of lamps, ordinarily sold as separate accessories. Daylight was used by fastening the camera into an otherwise blanked off window and placing a 45 degree angle outside so as to project sky light through the negative and the lens onto a copying board which wasw also a separate item.



In about the early 1920's, vertical enlargers, then frequently called "projection printers", came into common use, and horizontal enlargers of all sorts except those of extremely large size rapidly diappeared.